As the cost of sensors, communications systems and navigational systems has dropped, operators of commercial and fleet vehicles now have the ability to collect a tremendous amount of data about the vehicles that they operate, including geographical position data collected during the operation of the vehicle.
Vehicle fleet operators often operate vehicles along predefined and generally invariant routes. For example, buses frequently operate on predefined routes, according to a predefined time schedule (for example, along a route that is geographically, as well as temporally defined). Fleet operators often assign specific vehicles to particular routes. Occasionally, maintenance issues necessitate changing the vehicles assigned to specific routes. It is often tedious and time-consuming for fleet operators to keep track of which route a particular vehicle has been assigned to at any given time. It would be desirable to provide such fleet operators with means for automatically determining upon what route a particular vehicle has been (or currently is) operating.